Women-friendly events
Considering the many issues that face women in the geek community, mixed-gender geek groups may want to take special care to run women-friendly events. People-friendliness Obviously your mixed-gender geek event should be welcoming and comfortable for both women and men. This raises the question of why there needs to be special care taken to make a "women-friendly" event, as opposed to an "attendee-friendly" event. There is actually a lot of overlap between a woman-friendly event and an attendee-friendly event, but there's a particular difference: women-friendly and general attendee-friendly behaviour is likely a subset of acceptable behaviours among many all-male geek groups of friends. Many geek events are run on the principle of being like a gathering of close male buddies, only 100 times larger. Women-friendly events do mean limiting or excluding certain things are are acceptable in your private life such as discussion of sex and sexual attractiveness. This does not make an event men-unfriendly: very few men genuinely need to behave as if they are with their closest, most similar male friends at all times. In addition to women, men with different social styles, sexual orientations, cultural backgrounds or all three will also feel more comfortable if the emphasis is not on duplicating the social modes of the organisers' friends on a massive scale! Presentations Geek events often have women-unfriendly (and attendee-unfriendly!) presentations which assume that all speakers are part of a monolithic group of adult heterosexual men who want to bond over their commonality. Sexual material It is not uncommon for speakers at geek conferences to create a sexualized environment by showing sexually suggestive or pornographic slide content, almost always featuring women. This is another example of general attendee-unfriendliness, in addition to women-unfriendliness. Child attendees and any accompanying adults may find this unwelcome (or frightening, depending on the content) too, and men often also for various reasons do not want to view sexual material. Anyone attending the event in a work context — geek technical conferences often have attendees who are only geeks on work time — will be unprepared for material that wouldn't be welcome when described in their work environment. Your event should not allow sexual content, especially imagery, in slides or talks. There are a couple of special cases of sexual content. One is using sexual content when a talk's focus is on censorship or similar. However, one of the key anti-censorship arguments is that consenting adults should have the right to view sexual material at a time and place of their choosing. An audience at a geek event is not actually consenting to view sexual material right then merely by virtue of having turned up to a talk advocating against censorship. The other special case is on a sex-focussed geek event, where obviously sexual content is appropriate. However in this case organisers and speakers should still alert their attendees to the kind of material expected, so that the audience can be reasonably considered to have had the chance to consent. It should be made clear that audience members may freely leave a talk or activity at any time and for any reason, and they should not be called upon to justify themselves. There also needs to be clear descriptions of what content or behaviour is not welcome and emphasis placed on being inclusive of different sexual orientations, preferences and practices. Forewarning speakers Gently warn your speakers about unwanted content before the event (probably at the same time you tell them about projector testing and similar things). You can say something like: :name is an all-ages event and also welcomes people of different cultural backgrounds. As such, we ask speakers not to include sexual or suggestive content in their talk or slides, and to avoid any material targeting anyone on the basis of age, religion, race, gender, sexuality or ability. Session chairs will immediately end any presentation they judge to have included such material. Reacting to inappropriate content The chair or most senior organiser or volunteer present in a room should immediately intervene in any presentation outside the agreed bounds. They should approach the speaker and turn off the projection of any inappropriate content. They should then inform the speaker that the talk needs to end, and finish by apologising to the audience. In cases where the speaker is genuinely contrite, they should be allowed to apologise also. Social events Social events at geek gatherings are particularly tricky to make truly open and inclusive, but are particularly rewarding. An attendee who feels truly included and welcome socially is most likely to join your community long-term. Accessibility Large social events are frequently difficult to attend for anyone who is not perfectly healthy and able to compromise extensively on food and drink. In the case of women, a particular concern is women who are either pregnant and therefore likely to tire easily and to need to eat nutritious, high energy food very regularly, or have caretaking responsibilities for children and therefore likely restricted in their social availability to attend anything they can't bring children to. There will be attendees both female and male who have difficulties with after-hours social events for many reasons. Some of them are: * social or religious practices requiring that they not eat some foods (eg kosher, halal and vegetarian diets) or health problems with similar requirements; * illness or metabolism problems that require that they eat when they need to rather than wait for a caterer's tardy kitchen (eg diabetes, hypoglycemia); * pain or disability meaning that they cannot stand for long periods of time, as cocktail parties require; or * difficulty with having conversations in noisy environments (eg sensory integration dysfunctions or hearing loss). These are fiendishly difficult to address and likely cannot be completely resolved for any individual event, but here are some steps you can take to make social events accessible: * hold them in locations that have wheelchair access (these also happen to be more accessible for people who can walk, but only slowly or painfully); * hire caterers who can cater to common dietary restrictions and who are accustomed to getting them to the same people who ordered them (vegetarians in particular often find that their dishes have been taken by people who didn't like the look of the meat dish that night); * announce the time that food will be served well in advance to all attendees, and hold the caterer to it; * allow people with restricted diets early access to buffets to make the first choice; * split social events into stages (eg opening drinks, then dinner), so that people can attend a part of the event if need be; * make at least the early evening parts of social events open to children or offer childcare; * hold social events near the main venue, so that people who need to leave early have a short trip back to their accommodation; * hold social events at night in locations where attendees will not feel uneasy on the streets — the area should be well-lit, have other people around, and ready access to public transport; and * don't plan 'kidnap' social events — the ones where people are ferried off to an unannounced location and returned at the organisers' leisure, as these will exclude anyone who has any other plans for that time, or anyone who is unsure whether they might need to leave early for health or other reasons. Alcohol Having a comfortable and women/attendee-friendly social event can be a difficult problem when serving alcohol: drunken people can be noisy, threatening or harrassing. In addition, in many countries serving alcohol at an event automatically excludes children and therefore also anyone who needs to care for children. At the same time, many adult geeks enjoy alcohol and will expect it at events. Some possible approaches to serving alcohol: * have at least one event, more if possible, which is all-ages and where either alcohol is not served or is extremely limited; * don't have events where large amounts of alcohol are served without food, or are served to people who are sitting down; * avoid serving large amounts of alcohol in the early evening: if there's an open bar perhaps open it during or after dinner; or * consider serving very little alcohol, but hold the event in an area where attendees can go to bars or pubs nearby afterwards. If you have large numbers of under-age people at your event, do not try to cater to all under-age people with exactly the same events. Teenagers from about 15 years old and up will have quite different social requirements from younger children attending with their parents, who are different again from toddlers or babies. Harrassment of women If you receive complaints of attendees harassing women at social events: such as unwelcome remarks, aggressive or repeated sexual approaches, assaults and so on, you should immediately exclude the harassers from the social event, or the entire event if judged necessary. This must be seen as absolutely and unquestionably unwelcome. In addition, in the event of suspected assaults, you should call the police. This should not need to be dealt with by the victim of the assault or by the community. Supervision It is a very good idea to have some conference organisers or volunteers at social events who are sober and there specifically to represent the event organisers, to keep an eye out for anything starting to go bad, to hear complaints and to help attendees out with other problems (finding the taxi rank etc). Give them identifying t-shirts or similar, and have a special place set aside at your event as a base where one of these people can be found at all times. It should be quiet, well-lit and easy to find. Further Resources The Con Anti-Harassment Project is a gender-neutral, geek-specific resource for organisers and attendees seeking to reduce harassment in convention environments.